Building On a Lie
by Realta D
Summary: Someone lied when Gaara was born. Now, she had to make do with the false information everyone believed. Prequel to A Mistake Gone Right. Genderbending! Female Gaara experiencing puberty.


Gaara wasn't a normal fourteen year old boy in any sense of the word.

Technically speaking, Gaara wasn't a boy at all. She had a very female body... as distinctive as a female child's body was from their male counterpart. It hadn't been distinctive at all for anyone but Gaara herself for years but, worryingly enough, she had begun developing breasts a week ago.

She had been worried when she felt her nipples become too tender, specially irritable by the brush of her sand armor. Now she wondered how long it would take until her budding breasts were big enough for her secret to come out.

Gaara found out she was a girl when she was six. After she had killed her uncle and lost control over Shukaku, her body had changed. Looking back, she suspected there was some sort of jutsu hiding her true gender before, and Shukaku had somehow managed to burn that out when he possessed her.

It had been physical, not completely an illusion. She only truly realized it was perfectly possible, not just a delusion of hers, after she had seen Naruto use his sexy jutsu. She had asked him once, and her friend had allowed her to touch his sexy form's breasts – they were very solid, and not at all an illusion, just as solid as her male sexual organs had been when she was little.

Back when she had changed, she had been too psychologically disturbed to even care about it. By the time she had started to care, months later, she had been too hesitant to ask anyone she knew what was going on. She didn't trust anyone. She turned to anatomy books, instead, and that was how she learned of her true gender, while everyone else continued to believe she was a boy.

Gaara didn't care to let them know they were wrong. She didn't much care whether she was treated as a boy or as a girl – either way, they saw her as a monster and nothing else. But as she grew and realized all the hardships women were put through due to their gender, she consciously choose to continue pretending to be a boy.

Her choice might be jeopardized now.

She stood in front of her mirror, scrutinizing the two small, round buds on her nipples. One was bigger than the other, and they both hurt – specially when she pressed them flat with her sand. At least she didn't have to do it often, she had always made sure not to be naked around others, not even her brother. People tended to think she was either too shy, or felt too vulnerable, but they usually didn't press her. No one pressed her about anything – they were terrified of her.

She sighed and shrugged on a soft cotton shirt, taking off the body armor around her nipples to try and soothe the pain.

' _Poor little girl, she's scared of growing up!_ '

She ignored Shukaku's voice and laid on her bed, preoccupied with other things. Such as the fact she would soon start to menstruate. She had read about it in biology books – it would be the next step of her body's natural development, as she had already started getting breasts and body hair.

' _I wonder how in control you will be when you feel the smell of blood._ ' Shukaku dragged the last word in delight.

Gaara shut him off as best as she could, but that worried her too. Would she be able to control Shukaku? They said female jinchuuriki lost some of their control during stages of their periods, and specially during pregnancy. Not so much due to the smell of blood – she had killed people in missions since she had reigned the demon under her control, and she could control him just fine.

She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, trying to shut his voice out as he laughed obnoxiously inside her head. She couldn't sleep, but she had developed a routine of meditation since Naruto had fought with her. Emptying her mind and resting her body every night helped her keep a grasp of her sanity, and a tighter control over the demonic being inside her body. Sometimes, very rarely, she ended up dozing, but she would quickly startle awake before anything else could happen.

That night was no different.

. . . . .

The next morning, she left a sand clone lying on her bed, pretending to be meditating. She lived on her own, her siblings didn't often come to visit her. But, if they did come, they would let her rest, so they wouldn't detect it was a clone in her place.

She placed a illusion upon herself, that of a young kunoichi about her age, and went to one of the pharmacies in the market to see if there was anything there that could help her.

She knew that tampons were supposed to be used during menstruation. She had heard Temari groan and curse about them several times. Kankurou always looked horrified when their sister went on about her periods, but if she had never heard her complaints, Gaara wouldn't know as much as she did about pain killers and other essential toiletries. The books she had read didn't say menstruation was something painful, but it certainly was. She had seen her sister cry from the pain, and Temari wasn't the kind of woman who cried over little things.

Finding tampons wasn't a task as easy as Gaara had first surmised. It didn't help her the fact that she had never actually seen one. She searched two pharmacies on her own, before quietly giving up and deciding to ask someone about them.

She walked up to the pharmacist and asked with a straight face, even though she felt a little embarrassed. "Would you tell me where I can find tampons?" the man gaped at her, apparently caught off guard. Then, he looked more embarrassed than she felt.

A kunoichi not far from them – another client – chuckled as she studied her. "This way, kid." she waved towards her. Gaara bowed politely to the man, before hurrying after the woman. "Here you go." she waved to a shelf tucked in the corner of the store – it was pretty much hidden. The packages, themselves, looked very inconspicuous, she would likely not have found them on her own.

"Thank you." she bowed at the woman, then hesitantly reached towards one of the packs when she realized there were several different types. She didn't know which type she should buy.

"Are you buying for yourself?" she looked up at the woman, startled that she was still there, then silently nodded. "I can't help but notice you have no idea what you're doing, so I'll tell you this. I recommend against buying tampons, unless you're not a virgin anymore." she pointed out, and Gaara's eyes widened.

"Why?" she wondered quietly.

"You have to insert tampons inside yourself. It can get quite messy and painful if you have never had sex in your life." Gaara's lips parted in shock as her mind connected the dots. That meant Temari might not be a virgin anymore. She knew Temari used tampons since she had been fourteen. For three years now.

"...What else can I use?" she inquired quietly, pushing away from her mind the conundrum of her sister. Temari's sex life was none of her business. Their father would likely have gone mad if he knew she had lost her virginity without being married, but their father was dead, and if Kankurou had an issue with it, Temari would knock their brother halfway across the desert with her fan. Gaara really didn't want anything to do with it.

"Pads." the kunoichi pointed out, picking two of the packs on another shelf and placing them on her hand. "You'll need a non disposable one for missions, though I recommend you use disposable ones whenever you can, so you don't waste water washing them. Once you rid yourself of your pesky virginity, buy yourself a menstrual cup instead of tampons, they're infinitely more practical for a kunoichi." Gaara glanced down as a third, smaller pack was placed on her now full hands.

Only then she realized the whole aisle was dedicated to women's periods, and it boggled her mind. She had had no idea it was this complicated. "Um... Thank you." the woman threw her a somewhat sympathizing look.

"I didn't have my mom to teach those things to me either, I know that's hard. But you'll get used to it, kiddo." She took away the two medicine bottles from her small purchase basket and placed the three packs inside, then started placing other things inside – of which Gaara only recognized the painkillers Temari usually took. "Take these home and read the leaflets in the packages. It will help you along in the beginning."

"Really, thank you." Gaara bowed again, relieved. She had been lucky to find such a generous kunoichi. She had had the impression women weren't as open talking about their periods as Temari was, as this kunoichi seemed to be.

The woman grinned toothily at her. "You're welcome, kiddo. Welcome to adulthood, and good luck." she winked at her, then walked away with the two medicine bottles on her hand as she had left her basket behind.

The bill was quite costly, but Gaara had more money than she could spend during missions. She bought everything, then studied all the leaflets as she had been advised to.

. . . . .

In the end, she had worried for nothing. Her periods didn't come for a long time after that, even though she watched her breasts grow bigger, and the shape of her body change as the years passed.

She became Kazekage, and the need to hide her gender became even more imperative. Suna wasn't yet ready to have a woman in such a position of command, and she was in a better position to make their country more friendly for women and kunoichi while people believed her a man, paradoxically enough. People didn't question her nearly as much as they questioned Temari, when either took decisions which favored women over men.

Lucky for Gaara, it wasn't hard to keep her secret. Gaara was far from pretty – she had harder features than her sister, and her voice was a lot deeper than that of the women around her. The fact she usually kept her voice low probably made her sound even more like a man.

Her breasts proved to be the hardest of her features to hide – though thankfully they weren't as big as Temari's. She would wrap them tightly close to her body every day and cover the wraps with her sand armor in an imitation of a male chest. She also started using a buckle for her sand gourd which covered all of her chest area to make sure no one scrutinized any possible bump left uncovered by her schemes.

The closest she came from having her secret revealed was the few hours she had been clinically dead back when Shukaku had been forcefully taken from her. Thankfully, no one had tried to remove her armor then, and when they returned to Suna, she had managed to convince Kankurou that she didn't need help bathing despite the stiffness of her body. While her control of her sand had been shot, the tight wraps were the only things keeping other people from seeing her breasts, but everyone around her was still fooled.

She was almost seventeen now, and she hadn't menstruated yet. She had read once that stress could stop a woman's periods, and with Akatsuki after one of the people she considered very dear to her heart, stress was a constant companion nowadays.

She knew her ninjas noticed, too. She had heard them joke often about her need of an active sex life, while they believed she was far from earshot. She wasn't sure why they believed having sex would make her worry less about Naruto, but she had grown used to men's pervert tendencies over the years – her brother specially. He had tried to take her to a brothel more than once, despite the fact Gaara had made it clear the existence of those places annoyed her, as the women who worked there were usually treated less than human beings, much like Gaara had been once.

But, despite knowing men were perverts, their constant nudging of her towards starting her sexual life eventually spurred her curiosity. She wanted to explore her sexuality... but she didn't want to do it with anyone else. She couldn't bare her body to anyone – even if she hadn't anything to hide, she wouldn't want to have this level of intimacy with most people, either. She could count on one hand how many men could touch her without making her tense, and she definitely didn't want to proposition her brother. She didn't think Naruto would want to have sex with her, either.

She listened to the men, and after hearing so many apologies to the use of their hands, she tried using her hand to explore her sexual organs. It wasn't really all that pleasant at first, really.

The first time she really had felt pleasure touching herself was two nights ago.

After she had lost Shukaku, she had tried to take the habit of sleeping. It was hard to do – most times she would only lie awake in her bed the whole night, meditating as she had before. Some nights, though, she did fall asleep.

That night, she had had a very strange, enticing dream, with one of the few people she could endure the touches of – Naruto. She couldn't remember the particulars of her dream, but she had woken feeling wet and strangely sensitive between the legs. Running her fingers over herself then had made a very pleasant feeling course through her body – but she still wasn't sure how that was supposed to make her feel less stressed.

She continued to spy on her ninjas while they were talking about sex, trying to garner more information from them. That was exactly what she was doing now, hiding in the shadows as she listened to two chuunins, after she had pinpointed the nature of their talk.

"You got your wife a dildo?" one of them exclaimed in a whisper that would have been discrete only if they were surrounded by civilians and genins. "I can't believe that!"

"It was one of the best ideas I ever had." the other chuunin boasted.

"A rubber dick? Really?" the other snorted incredulously. Gaara's eyes sharpened as she stared at them.

"Really! Now she has something to keep her busy while I'm away on missions, instead of cheating on me... Like your wife does." the other chuunin snorted and punched his shoulder, but it looked playful. They seemed to be sharing an inside joke.

Gaara left them, to find out what a dildo was. Getting the information wasn't easy, but in the afternoon of the next day, she stood wearing an illusion in front of one of the so called 'sex shops'.

She had debated on whether she wanted to go disguised as a man or a woman. She decided she would go as a woman, and in case she needed help and no one was willing to help her, she would return disguised as a man.

There was no need to worry, though. The attendant was quite happy to help her, and give her a crash course on the several 'toys' he had on his store. In the end, Gaara hadn't bought a dildo, but several other toys and books instead.

She quickly found out how wonderful sex could really be, and despite the fact she had never even kissed another person in her life, she was definitely not a virgin anymore.

. . . . .

Her first period choose the worst moment ever to happen. Though, thankfully, she felt no pain, and no one batted an eye at the fact she had blood on her trousers after her struggle against Madara.

Well, truth be told, Mei had given her a long look after she noticed where exactly the bloody spot was. But, if her colleague had noticed anything, she had remained discreet and said nothing to Gaara.

She had trained using the menstrual cup, and thankfully she had no troubles with it as the days passed, and she continued to fight on the war.

She was lucky enough to get her periods during the night as they became more stable, so she never had another visible accident within sight of other people as the years passed. It was really luck, because her periods were extremely irregular, and they were completely painless. She would only realize it was time when she went to the toilet and saw blood on her clothes.

Despite that, at the age of twenty seven no one had yet figured out she was a woman disguised as a man. She had long since stopped worrying about the possibility – she was discreet, but not paranoid about it.

Sometimes she still had the impression that Mei knew, or at least suspected, but the woman never did anything to confront or expose her. She would only offer her a little smirk every once in a while, when Gaara was given a typically male adjective by someone else – Oonoki specially. But she told no one.

Life went on as normal.


End file.
